Prosody in Interaction stems from the 2008 conference Prosody and Interaction in
Potsdam and is a festschrift to Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen, who spearheaded the study
of prosody in naturally occurring interaction. The volume is presented in three parts
plus an extensive introduction. It has a refreshing format of main paper + response
for most chapters. Many chapters include supplementary audio and/or video, which
further aids readers in forming their own opinions of the analyses. As a conversation
analyst who is interested in prosody, I found it quite useful and accessible.

Whilst Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen has undoubtedly made significant contributions to
the study of prosody, the preface and foreword frame her work as foundational to
prosody research in general. Margret Selting's introduction offers a more wellrounded
view of prosody research (whilst remaining focused largely on post-Couper-
Kuhlen research) and is extremely interesting. Although the focus is understandably
on prosody in interaction, a stronger historical account of previous work that involved
prosody in various ways that have informed the field would be useful to non-prosodic
researchers (e.g., from psychology and linguistics: Bing 1980 and Duncan 1972;
work on aphasia: Danly and Shapiro 1972 and Weintraub, Mesulam, and Kramer
1981; in particular languages: Vaissière 1975 and Halle and Keyser 1966; and in
poetry: Shapiro and Beum 1965). These criticisms aside, Selting clearly defines how
prosody is conceived in the volume through a “West European research tradition” (4).
She describes prosody as always co-occurring with grammar and lexis, ignoring nonlexical
vocalisations (e.g., Wiggins 2002) but later addressing them as a research
area (23).

Selting raises the relationship between prosody and syntax of a turn constructional
unit (TCU) with respect to transition between speakers (9). This is a very important
and interesting issue where input from researchers with prosodic expertise is very
valuable. Unfortunately for readers unfamiliar with Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson
(1974), the inevitably brief treatment of how transitions are organised (Section 2.3)
could be misleading, especially because of references to “turn yielding” and “turn
holding” which are central to Duncan's account of turn-taking (Duncan 1972) rather
than Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson’s (1974) model. German speakers may also
find the extracts confusing in relation to the text. For example, extracts that are given
as multi-unit turns (and would be in English) are not multi-unit in German due to final
position verbs (8). These criticisms aside, section 2.4

contains a particularly compelling account of action formation grounded in the practical concerns of
participants. Section 3.1 contains a concise and informative history of technological
advancements in prosody research, and Selting gives a fair assessment of her own
transcription systems.

Selting provides convincing arguments why other research traditions ought to be
concerned with prosody in natural conversation and how different approaches have
accomplished different goals. Arnulf Deppermann responds with an argument for
large public corpora and technology as important moves forward.

Part I deals with linguistic organisation (including prosody) in social interaction.
Gareth Walker (51-72) provides a thorough account of prosodic and phonetic
features of rush-throughs. His analysis is accessible to a wide audience and includes
clear figures and explanations whilst also addressing potential criticism. Whilst
Susanne Günthner’s critique (73-79) appears unnecessarily harsh, she adds greater
depth to some of the issues that Walker mentions.

Whilst Walker explores the prosodic features that occur in a particular structural
position, Richard Ogden (81-102) goes on to demonstrate the potential of comparing
prosodic features across positions and categories and describes how initial
complaints and summing up differ. It is an ambitious paper, and future research in
this area could include summing up of complaints versus summing up other topics.
Auli Hakulinen (105-108) provides a substantive and thought-provoking critique,
citing the need to clearly define phenomena using recurrent features that are
available to interactants. She discusses how this approach applies to how complaints
are oriented to as such by participants and expands on the construction of
complaints as actions, alluded to by Ogden, working from a largely conversation
analytic (CA) framework.

Continuing from a CA framework, Geoffrey Raymond (109-130) offers a beautifully
woven analysis incorporating classical and current CA research that would be
intelligible to people who are new to CA or yes/no interrogative (YNI) research yet
has analytic depth relevant to specialists. The breadth of related phenomena and
availability of supplementary data contribute substantially to his explication of
prosody’s role in responses to YNIs.

John Local et al. (131-159) describe the position and prosody of reissued turns with a
focus on structural considerations. Although their reasons for classifying such turns
as retrieving, redoing, and resuscitating are unclear, they make a strong case that
there are

prosodic differences between reissues in these positions. Greater depth of
analysis of what these prosodic differences accomplish would be welcome.

Harrie Mazeland and Leendert Plug (161-188) return to the approach of examining
the prosodic features of a very particular practice. They discuss sequential and
prosodic characteristics of the Dutch particle hoor. Although their analysis could be
improved by clearly justifying their terminology (e.g., marked and un-marked with
seemingly conflicting data) and comparing a wider range of responses and actions,
this chapter offers an engaging account of hoor that is very accessible to non-Dutch
speakers.

Part II moves from the prosodic properties of organisational structures to prosody as
a structuring device itself. Beatrice Szczepek Reed (191-212) begins Part II by
questioning whether intonation phrases exist in natural conversation. Most research
on intonation phrases has used elicited speech, so this is a very relevant external
validity issue. Engagement with Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) would have
enhanced the chapter greatly, as many of the points and criticisms she makes are
addressed in this and related papers. For example, it is thus not surprising that
people design their turns so that pauses fall mid-TCU, as silence at the end of a TCU
would create a gap between speakers. It is unclear how the new terminology she
suggests is an advance in our understanding of turn design. Rather, I think the
important message is that whilst pauses separate smaller chunks of speech within
TCUs, the prosodies of these chunks do not follow intonation phrase patterns as
described in classical elicited-speech and oratory research. Jan Anward (213-216)
challenges Reed’s analysis that a participant’s chunks within her turn are a trouble
source. He analyses the trouble source as the peculiarity of the participant’s desire
and notes that the chunks are syntactically impeccable immediately before one repair
initiation. He goes on to suggest further research areas around chunking.

Prosody in stylistic delivery is then explored by Friederike Kern (217-238). She draws
on a large body of research on sport commentaries and provides a thorough prosodic
analysis of German radio football commentary. Johannes Wagner (239-242)
engages well with Kern’s analysis, drawing on differences between football and other
commentaries. He proposes that although commentators have similar resources
available, they are used to accomplish different styles.

Looking at a very different setting, Bill Wells (243-262) delivers an important and
thought-provoking analysis of child-parent interactions and the role of prosody in
interpreting very young children’s speech. He aims to explore tonal repetition/contrast
but focuses on lexical

repeats of the adult’s turns. Greater attention to the sequential
environment could improve what currently appears a rather superficial assignment of
turns as tonal repetition and contrast based on phonetics rather than tone. Wells
shows that although very young children do not use adult prosodies, their prosodies
are neither random nor meaningless. Picking up on the issue of lexical repeats,
Traci Walker (263-266) expands on the adequacy of the child’s phonetically imperfect
turns based on tonal repetition.

Although not escaping entirely from structural considerations, Part III aims to address
prosody as a semiotic resource. Elisabeth Gülich and Katrin Lindemann (pp. 269-
294) begin this part by offering a single case analysis involving a woman with
epilepsy in the context of a research interview. Their work adds to a growing
literature on how fear and panic are expressed in German without naming emotions.
Elisabeth Reber (295-302) addresses how the constructions of fear are
interactionally managed rather than unilateral phenomena.

Hiroko Tanaka (303-332), looking at a particular recurrent practice, focuses on one
Japanese non-lexical response token, huun (pronounced approximately ‘hmm’). She
shows how huun in Japanese conversation is used to do a variety of tasks. Perhaps
most interesting to an English speaker is how huun, even with “affective loading”,
promotes topic closure rather than expansion. It would be very interesting to see a
cross-cultural study on similar vocalisations. Dagmar Barth-Weingarten (333-338)
follows with a discussion of the technical aspects of visual and prosodic resources
that Tanaka mentions and how these can aid in research on lexical and non-lexical
items.

Also exploring a non-lexical resource, Cecilia E. Ford and Barbara A. Fox (339-368)
take a multimodal approach to the construction and recognition of laughables, which
they show is necessary for understanding co-present laughables. Whilst I take issue
with the term laughable (its denotation is that something merits derision), I can
appreciate that it is a widely used term. On the other hand, they define laughter
colloquially, thus avoiding elitism and distance from participant orientations. They
also provide a detailed account of non-vocal practices involved in (some)
constructions of humorous utterances and their responses.

One briefly mentioned issue is that of (h) being used in transcripts when an utterance
is not in fact plosive. This may necessitate a return to Gail Jefferson’s transcription of
breath quality during utterances (e.g., Jefferson, 2004), as she distinguishes between
breathy (as in h) and plosive (as in (h)) speech among others. New transcription
symbols may become necessary to capture the nuances of laughter. Karin Birkner
(369-372) critiques the attempt to address such broad phenomena as speech-laugh
or “possibly laugh relevant sounds”

(Jefferson 2010). She clarifies that what is being
studied is the sharing of amusement. However, some aspects of her critique seem
unwarranted, such as “a laughable is a holistic phenomenon which is difficult to
reconstruct by reading the transcripts without listening to the excerpt.” Precisely
because transcription of laughter is imprecise, one would expect the supplementary
videos that have been provided.

Using a detailed single case analysis approach, Charles Goodwin (373-394)
demonstrates the prosodic resources used by a man with aphasia, Chil, during an
interaction with his family. Chil has a three word vocabulary and uses a range of
gestures and prosodies to convey rich meaning using these three words and nonlexical
vocalisations. Video extracts and drawings within transcripts bring the
interaction to life along with a clear and engaging writing style. Helga Kotthoff (395-
400) takes implications of Goodwin’s analysis to children and second language
learners. Whilst she makes some valid points, it is a leap from a man who has lost
his ability to communicate with people who had previously been able to understand
him to these populations. Any pedagogy relevant to Goodwin's data is Chil’s family
learning to understand, not teaching Chil to speak competently. Nevertheless, issues
of understanding and finding ways to communicate unknown words exist across
these populations.

Overall, Prosody in Interaction is a collection of work falling broadly under the
heading of prosody research. Some are very high-level prosodic analyses and others
are more traditionally conversation analytic. Despite the precipitating conference
being “international” (xv), all authors list their affiliations in Western Europe or the US.
No work on tonal languages is included, and most are Germanic with much of the
transcription in GAT or GAT2 and no transcription key provided. A more global
orientation would be appreciated and useful. As a festschrift, however, the volume
represents a lively and constructive debate amongst friends. The variety of topics
and styles makes it accessible to a wide range of people of different interests and
career stages, but it is not necessarily comprehensive. The inclusion of responses to
most of the papers lends a nice touch for both the student and the experienced
researcher.